


love is not a disaster (except of course it is)

by staticfiction



Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Valentine's Day, Valentine's Day Fluff, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings, shameless fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 03:29:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17779724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staticfiction/pseuds/staticfiction
Summary: It's Valentine's Day and nothing is going right. Enter Sungjin.





	love is not a disaster (except of course it is)

**Author's Note:**

> Huzzah. I have a beta and she's wonderful and she's the best. Thank you, Jade.

 

Perspective. That is what I need. A deep, calming breath and perspective. After all, it is not the end of the world. The sky is not crashing about the Earth in a most spectacular fashion, the zombies have yet to rise and commence the apocalypse, and neon tanga swimsuits over neon tights have not come back in vogue this season.

I am merely, warmly, and quite comfortably even, sitting out on the curb of my most convenient convenience store seconds to midnight on Valentine’s Day kissing He Who Will Never Be On The Kiss List Even If It’s The End Of The World Park Sungjin.

And it’s not a disaster.

Except, of course, it is.

Granted, on the scale of international disasters, the moment barely triggered a blip in the system. No one is sending out special armed forces, or the coast guard, or a search party. No one is calling out a citywide evacuation into the secret underground bunkers the government has built beneath the city. Deep sea monsters are not rising from the ocean. Genetically modified dinosaurs brought back from extinction have not escaped their park containments. The Romulans are not invading our planet.

It’s far worse.

And as much as I hate to admit it, the entire night became one of those nights that defy all logic and predictability. There’s no explaining The Moment. I couldn’t then. I still can’t now. It just happened. The moment took a sentience of its own and evolved into something else, something nearly alive that willed the universe to act according to its depraved desires. Life simply decided to crash upon me in a flaming free fall, utterly destroying whatever good sense I had left and causing me to behave in ways completely incongruous to my character.

Then again, I suppose, it could have been the mojitos.

But probably not.

Anyway, everything still happened in spite of the drink and my better faculties deciding to take a night off. Everything happened exactly the way it shouldn’t have. Nothing was fine. Or anyway, it wasn’t for me. Everyone else seemed to be okay from their perspective.

Moving on, the night in question as aforementioned, was Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Night? Whatever. It was the fourteenth of February, a Thursday, and I was, as per my usual, in my designated spot on the couch in a furniture-assisted cuddle at Jae’s apartment nursing a large tumbler of homemade mojito in my arms and bowl of leftover cake from the office balanced on my lap.

“Okay. Let’s do it,” I announced, dumping a bag of folded pieces of paper into a plastic fishbowl I borrowed from Dowoon. I had spent the whole morning sneaking time from work to cut up the card stock into squares and to write down items from various lists.

Like most ideas I come to regret in the morning, this one had come from the internet.

And insomnia.

And, sure, the mojito too I guess.

In the days leading to the dreaded V-Day, I had come into the unsettling realization that despite my best efforts at maintaining conversation with this dude I met on this dating app, working my way up to asking him out that night for a casual, low-stakes, doesn’t-have-to-mean-anything night out, I have, as the young ones call it, been ghosted. Because apparently, the ghost of his sudden disappearance will never leave my consciousness and haunt me for all of eternity. Or something.

True, I had no real emotional connection with this guy and the only reason I was even on that dating app and have somehow matched with anyone at all is because Jae and Ayeon set up a profile for me and have done the necessary swiping. True, I don’t buy into this Hallmark holiday, and often straddle the line between believing it to be a capitalistic, consumeristic, evil corporate invention on one side and a collective mass expression of love and celebration of the lengths our ancestors had to go through to be free to love who they want to love on the other side. Also true, I was lonely and I was drunk and my love life was a disaster zone.

But I had made preparations should my date go as planned. For six nights, I sat with my laptop, clicking on link after link, trudging through hot-take articles from not celebrating, to unconventional date ideas, to reasons why there’s nothing wrong with going on a classic date if you really want to. I must have made it a drinking game because how else can I explain why I, punk-rock and blue-hair-don’t-care, clicked on an Instagram post of a fishbowl nested in fairy lights and stuffed half-full with rolled pastel slips of paper wound with twine. The idea was to fill the bowl with ideas for the night then extract one of those rustic-chic pieces of paper every agreed time interval, and do as it says throughout the night.

But it wasn’t until I was sitting there, all alone and dateless on the night half the population was rubbing your singleness in your face, did the idea strike. With the amount of time and effort I had invested into this one singular fleeting moment in my life, I had decided to push through regardless.

Suddenly, I had a plan.

I was going to date myself.

And I was going to go through as many items in my fishbowl as reasonably possible.

Self-love and all that.

It was good plan. It was thoroughly thought-through plan. Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on your perspective—it was a plan that was not meant to be.

Jae plopped his lanky frame down on the cushioned chair next to me and held out his bag of buttered popcorn, fresh from the microwave and still in the packaging paper. “And by ‘Let’s do this,’ do you mean to include me in these plans of yours?”

“If you like,” I offered. “Would you really send me out there into the wild all by myself?”

He shrugged and pushed a handful of popcorn into his mouth. “You don’t  _ have _ to do anything, you know? Whatever happened to never buying into the system? I thought the idea was to protest and boycott the corporate evils that pressure us into being in relationships?”

“This  _ is _ my protest,” I pressed, waving with a flourish at the fishbowl. As added insult to the injury I intended to unleash unto the world, I dressed in black. Black turtleneck. Black jeans. Black Doc Martens. “Also I just really want to. I don’t want all this effort to go to waste. I mentally prepared myself for this date for a week.”

“Gotcha,” he answered, tossing a kernel high into the air and catching it in his mouth. “I thought you bought an outfit for tonight? You girls kept sending me pics for opinions. Which one did you finally get?”

“Yeah. About that…” Ayeon, Jimin, and I went to the mall the previous weekend to find an outfit that made me look a little less introverted and sullen. It was a successful trip, though frustrating and philosophical and self-reflective near the end of it. The Dress mocked me from inside my bag and I sent it a sidelong glance. Although I didn’t think I would be wearing it, I had brought it along nonetheless. Some guilt over leaving it behind to be forgotten in my closet. Ignored in my bag maybe, but at the very least it wasn’t spending time all alone in my tiny studio apartment with nothing but silence for company.

“Right,” Jae chirped. He gestured at the fishbowl. “Are you just gonna carry that thing around with you?”

“Yes.”

“Alrighty.”

“Are you with me?”

“Can’t,” he said, nose twitching like a rabbit’s. “The entire outside world is gonna be congested with flowers and stuffed animals and all sorts of things, and I have no desire to subject myself to self-flagellation via allergens. Get it? Congested?” Jae’s gaze shot to the other side of the room at the sound of a bedroom door opening. His eyes took a devious gleam. “But Sungjin’s not doing anything tonight. Ain’t that right, my friend?”

Sungjin is Jae’s flatmate. He’s something of a constant variable in my life in that unspoken manner that Jae’s friends have become my friends because peopleing isn’t my strong suit. Sungjin is inevitable in that he’s just always around. Literally. Figuratively. Furthermore, he’s the type of guy who was easy to be friends with. He made you feel welcome, as if nothing at all was an inconvenience or an intrusion or a waste of his time even though he has his hands full with his day job at the kindergarten and the whole band thing they were going for on weekends.

Not that Sungjin and I were friends.

We were more like two people who happened to be in each other’s spaces in nauseating frequency because our social circles overlapped at several crucial intersections. Life would have been easier if our acquaintance could have warmed into friendship over time, but things have been on a permanent downhill slope ever since the day we met.

(For the record, it was all Sungjin’s fault. Don’t believe him if and when he says otherwise.)

I glanced at Sungjin from over my shoulder with the intent to shut him up before he could even comment on my presence. As I took in his forest green plaid over his plain black shirt and his cap pulled over his head, I got the strangest tingle behind my ears and heat creeping up my neck. But before I could look away, I locked eyes with Park Sungjin.

From across the room we stared at each other. I’m not sure for how long. It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds but it felt longer. Slowly, he tilted his head at me as his lips curved into a half-smirk…

… And then he winked at me.

Heat surged to my face and I broke the stare to drop my eyes to my lap, but not before I saw him chuckling to himself from my peripheral vision. I was blushing, too. Why? I don’t know why. Sungjin has this habit of lording his unpredictability over me just because he can, and this was a prime example of him doing things just for the fun of it. I needed a drink. Immediately.

Fumbling for my tumbler, I knocked back a large gulp of my mojito, but the lime slices, the mint leaves, and the ice had somehow all gathered right on the brim and into my throat, sending me into a coughing fit and spilling all over my clothes. In my flailing, I also upended the bowl of cake and frosting all over my lap. In a valiant, and honestly desperate, effort to keep away any more stains from the poor couch, I angled myself in such a way that minimised the mess. Only to crash right down the floor, taking the fishbowl with me in a heap of ice, white rum, limes, mint, and marshmallow cake.

I stared at the ceiling in resignation, wondering if someone out there had some grudge against me.

All bets were on Sungjin.

Somewhere in the background, I heard Jae laughing and clapping his hands but I just didn’t have it in me to bother anymore. With the last of my dignity, I rolled to my side and pushed myself up, sighing at my own misery as I gathered the ruined cake back into the bowl. Thankfully, there was not another international incident as I made my way to the kitchen to soak my tumbler and bowl in the sink. Unless Sungjin watching me with amused eyes and an equally amused half-smile the entire time counted as an international incident. Because it did for me.

I ignored him as best as I could and willed him to go away, but he never did. He never leaves when you want him to. Instead, he made himself more comfortable and leaned against the counter like he was posing for some magazine or something.

So annoying.

Against my better judgment, I turned to him and said, “Go ahead, let it all out. Have at it.”

“Are you hurt?”

I blinked and moved away from him, clutching my head and frowning. “No. No, no, no, no. No.”

“No, you’re not hurt?”

Black spots bounced before my eyes. “No.”

“So you’re not hurt? Or no, you’re not  _ not _ hurt?”

“No. You do not get to do this,” I wheezed.

“Do what?”

I could hear the stifled laughter in his voice. Planting my fists on my hips, I squared my shoulders and lifted my chin. My lips were starting to feel numb, but I carried on nonetheless. “You do not get to ask if I got hurt.”

Especially not when he’d been the reason for my freakout just minutes before.

“ _ Are _ you hurt?” He was serious then, and the words were coupled with an intense stare. Intense, but concerned. Intensely concerned?

I dropped my hands to my sides and sighed. “I am wet and I am sticky but I am not hurt.”

At that point I realized I was more of a mess than usual. In the literal sense. I needed to get cleaned up. I needed to get away from Sungjin. I needed to get on with the night and get on with my life. Without acknowledging him, I walked back to the den, grabbed my things, and headed straight for the bathroom.

“Wait,” Sungjin said, holding out a hand. “I’ll get you a towel.” Then he ducked into his room and reappeared a few moments later with a fluffy white towel which he handed to me with the most emotionally constipated expression on his face.

A couple of beats passed before I reached for the towel, and it took another awkward moment before he let go. Sungjin didn’t say anything else after that little not-really-tug-of-war. He just headed straight to the kitchen, grabbed a roll of paper towels, and cleaned up after the mess he caused.

I turned to Jae for assistance, but he just shrugged at me as if the weirdest thing didn’t just happen right before his eyes. He slumped sideways against his chair, propped his knees over the arm, and pressed his nose against the screen of his phone. I understood what he was doing. In a situation like this, it was best to stay out of Sungjin’s way.

Even though it was too late and he wouldn’t hear me, I muttered a thank you to Sungjin before I locked myself inside the bathroom. After a quick cleanup, I wiped myself dry and contemplated The Dress as though I had a choice in the matter. After feigned deliberation, I put it on and stepped outside, feeling unreasonably self-conscious.

Sungjin saw me first, as he was standing next to the kitchen counter and Jae had his back turned to the bathroom. In his hands were the fishbowl and whatever pieces of paper salvaged from the mess. He looked like he was about to say something but was holding back. There was a look in his eyes that I couldn’t place, something that shifted from the moment he saw me step out to the moment he  _ looked _ at me.

I smoothed down the skirt of the soft pale yellow dress, feeling under attack from Sungjin’s gaze. While Ayeon and Jimin had been busy rummaging the racks, the wraparound dress had caught my attention like it had been sitting there all this time waiting for me. My friends had had no time for my hesitation, so as soon as they’d noticed my interest, they’d shoved me in a fitting room to try it on. The Dress fit like a dream, from the gentle sweep of the skirt falling down to my knees and to the delicate short sleeves wrapping like tulip petals over my shoulder. For the first time in a long while, I hadn’t felt like a fool trying on a pretty dress.

But foolishness was definitely what I was feeling right now. And because I am curious to a fault, instead of moving away from Sungjin and going on with my life, I stepped closer, nearly invading his space, to sharply prod his shoulder. Sungjin didn’t even flinch. Although he did rub the spot like an aggrieved old man.

That was the moment it dawned on me that I was probably tipsy-going-on-drunk. Not only did I cross our personal boundaries by walking right up to him, I actually poked him. Although I can’t remember for sure what the unspoken restraining order was about. All I could think of was how my fingertip burned from the contact, from the warmth of him that didn’t at all feel like it came from the layers of his clothes.

Sungjin kept staring at me.

“Whoa! You clean up nicely.  _ Cleans _ up really nice. Right, Sungjin?” Like a shot of good sense, Jae’s voice broke us out of this inexplicable trance. “Really nice. But, you two, you gotta go. Both of you. Like, right now.”

“Excuse me?”

Jae was kneeling on top of the cushy chair, one hand holding on to the backrest for support and his other hand waving his phone at us like it explained everything. “Sammy and McKay are coming over. We’re filming that thing we’ve been planning since forever. So if you’re gonna go, you gotta go.”

“So you’re just kicking me out?”

“Actually, you and Sungjin.”

“I hate you,” I mumbled, taking the opportunity to extricate myself from Sungjin’s space and stomp around in my boots.

“You really don’t,” Jae said, too smugly for his own good. “I’m like, your most favourite person on the entire planet. The entire universe even. But we gotta set up so you gotta go. You too, Sungjin. Quickly, come on.”

That was my cue. That was my chance to get away from the mess, from the stress, and especially from Sungjin and his… Sungjin-ness. I needed to leave before the night got any stranger. I crossed the room, grabbed my coat, and without pausing to say goodbye to anyone, I walked right out the door.

“Go forth, my child, and date thyself.”

“You forgot your fishbowl.”

I nearly slipped and fell on my butt. Of course Sungjin would be right behind me. There was only one way out of their building, and him also being exiled—from his own home, no less—made us unlikely bedfellows. Not that I thought a bed would be involved. Or that I have ever strung the words ‘Sungjin’ and ‘bed’ in the same thought process. Because no, I have not. Of course not. That was a brave new frontier that did not need exploring.

But I digress.

I hit the down button on the elevator before holding my hands out for my fishbowl.

“You should put your coat on first,” he said, his raspy voice amplified in the empty hallway. “It’s cold out.”

The outbreak of goosebumps on my arms was a testament to the temperature. Not anything else. I pulled on my coat and took the bowl which was notably warm from his touch. Once his hands were free, he slipped his arms through his black bomber jacket and shrugged it on.

Ruggedly-handsome-manly-man-expensive-cologne style.

I turned on my heel and took the stairs down instead.

Of course, he followed me. I hadn’t even made it halfway down a flight of stairs when Sungjin came up beside me, casually falling into step with me. For the most part, I ignored him as usual. The silence, however, led my mind to wander. So did my eyes.

Yes, I suppose Sungjin did look very handsome that night dressed as comfortably as he was. I wasn’t about to deny that just because I didn’t like him. I wasn’t blind. Sungjin was handsome in that understated way that crept up on you, and once you acknowledge the fact, it’s as though you’ve seen the light and could no longer claim otherwise. More dangerous than his visual was the inevitability of noticing the rest of him—his calm assuredness, his solid presence, his quiet confidence.

He raised a brow at me.

Naturally, it was at that perfect moment my foot missed the next stair and I tumbled down in an inelegant flailing of limbs. In a universe that loved me, I would have made quite the spectacle on the floor and gone unconscious then and there, but of course this isn’t the alternate reality where I am saved from further embarrassing myself.

Sungjin caught me, of course. Somehow, he’d seen that coming and shot his arm out just in time to catch me in his arms as I barrelled straight into his chest. His firm, solid chest. His hands were hot on my arms as he steadied me on the bottom step. His scent was warm and clean and just a little bit minty.

Something in the air crackled like an open wire, and I could feel the shift from my sharp panicked gasps to my slow and labored breathing. I was standing so close to him, almost at eye level a step or two above him, and I saw the change in his eyes as he watched the transformation. There was something in his eyes, something new that I had never seen before. A kind of… hunger? His eyes dropped down to my lips, and if I leaned right into him...

Mortification raced through me like one of Wonpil’s earth-shattering synth drops. My heartbeat was in my ears— _ thump-thUMP-THUMP _ —and my insides were twisting around doing a Cirque du Topsy Turvy. If I hadn’t been blushing before, I was definitely blushing then.

“Okay there?” he asked. He  _ dare _ asked.

I wrenched myself away from him, nearly knocking myself over in the process (again), and marched right down the remaining flight of stairs, out the double doors, and into the chilly night air.

“Hey, wait up. Where are you going?”

“Did Jae somehow force you into doing this?” I yell over my shoulder. My face was so hot, steam must have been rising off it.

“No one forces me into doing anything,” came his easy reply. “And you forgot your fishbowl.”

I looked down at my empty hands.

Well, shit.

“Do you want to go back for it?” he asked, strolling right next to me, not even flinching when I turned to scowl at him.

“Forget it,” I snapped. I turned down the street and power-walked like an auntie on a mission during a 75% off grocery sale. “I’ll just wing it.”

“Wait up.”

“No.” A soft wind blew a few strands of my hair onto my face, and I stubbornly pushed them away from my eyes so I could effectively glare at him. “You do not get to do this.”

“Do what?” He looked genuinely confused so I crushed the urge to just walk away from him.

“If you feel sorry for me, don’t. I don’t need your pity.”

“I don’t feel sorry for you.”

“Then what is it?”

“What is what?”

“ _ This _ . We don’t do this.” The words squeezed out the last of my breath, making my voice high-pitched and shrill.

“Do what?”

“This!” I gesticulated wildly between us. “ _ This, _ as in, you don’t need to do whatever it is you’re doing while I go and do my pathetic Valentine’s romp because I’m trying to make a point here and I don’t need you or your judgment.”

“I don’t think it’s pathetic.”

Once again, Sungjin had caught me completely off-guard, and all I could say was, “You don’t?”

“No.” He said the word so simply, so straightforwardly, I had no choice but to simply accept it. “Is it really so unbelievable to want to spend time with you?”

I looked up at him from beneath the bill of his cap, unable to discern whether or not he was serious behind that patented half-smile, half-smirk thing. I leaned forward, pushing myself on my toes and looked into his eyes like the moment in the stairwell never even happened.

He watched me scrutinize him in mild-amusement, but his gaze never wavered from mine.I knew then he was serious. Sungjin wanted to spend Valentine’s Day with me. He wanted to follow me around doing whatever comes up from the bowl. That even after I lost the bowl, he was still on board. He wanted to  _ voluntarily _ spend time with me.

So now, Sungjin and I were together. Alone. On purpose.

The world was truly off its axis. 

With a huff, I started down the street again even though I had no clue where I was going. My impulsive trek out of their apartment and the loss of my pre-planned choices forced me to make a snap decision so I took a familiar route. Their building was near the university area, only a few blocks away from the artsy urban culture side of the city. I knew we wouldn’t be the only ones out on the street, and soon enough we walked into a fair crowd of couples in matching outfits, various public displays of affection, and flowers everywhere. Flowers and stuffed animals and red balloons. I was getting a headache just processing all this stimuli. Though it was barely a salve to my wounds, it didn’t hurt that it wasn’t just couples out for the night. There were friends out in groups, too. Lots of them. Being loud. Laughing.

Meanwhile, I was stuck with Sungjin.

I cut a glance at him in an attempt to read the expression on his face, but yet again he just raised his brow at me like he knew what I was trying to do before I could even put a word to it. With my options dwindling, I decided to just get straight to the point.

“Why don’t  _ you _ have a date?” I asked. Later on, I would reflect on that question and why it mattered.

Sungjin knew why I was perpetually single, as well as all the other sordid details of my life he had no business knowing. It was one of those occupational hazards of him always being around. Nobody minds because he’s Sungjin. Because even if most of the time we like to ignore each other and I make fun of him when he has his back turned, he still has no qualms about coming over to help with my plumbing, or nailing down a loose board, or assembling a shelf when my building manager ignores me.

He shrugged. “Because I didn’t ask her out.”

I shoved my hands inside my coat pockets before I reached out for a passing stuffed bear and tore it to shreds with my bare hands.

I couldn’t imagine it. I didn’t  _ want _ to imagine Sungjin asking anyone out on a date. It would be too weird. Because he’s  _ Sungjin _ . He’s… grumpy, like half the time. The other half, he’s just an old man who’s seen too much. Perhaps what was weirder was that, in an unconscious way, I knew Sungjin had been just as single as I was all throughout our acquaintance.

“Ah,” I answered. “Why not?”

“She already had a date.”

A random shoulder and a bouquet of roses rammed right into me, and I took that opportunity to walk closer to Sungjin just so I could better see the play of expressions on his face. I couldn’t help it. I knew it was a personal moment, but since it was too late to try to not embarrass myself in front of him, it didn’t matter anymore that I invaded his closely guarded personal space yet again. This was a new side to him that I had yet to experience, so color me intrigued.

He scowled at the backs of the heads of the couple that bumped into me before guiding me down a sidestreet. His arm was a good few inches away from me, but I could feel him around my shoulders and it was a veritable threat to my lucidity and sense of equilibrium. Once we were away from the main street, I eased out from under his makeshift crowd-control barrier and put back much needed space between us. If I wanted to fully press the subject, I needed to be in top form. Dealing with Sungjin on a regular basis was frustrating enough. Prodding a potentially sensitive subject in a high-stress environment felt a lot like a kill-or-be-killed scenario.

“So where did you want to go?”

The question came so unexpectedly, and as such I responded in a manner fitting the situation and reflective of my intellect.

“Huh?”

The corner of his lips quirked into a tentative smile. “You had plans, didn’t you? The fishbowl? What did you want to do?”

A quick survey of our immediate surroundings easily led to the conclusion that it was unlikely—at best, impossible at worst—that we would be entertained within the hour by any establishment. I knew this. Sungjin knew this. We both knew staying in was the better idea, but I didn’t want to stay home alone and he would never had gone out if Jae hadn’t kicked him out. A heavy cloud weighed down over me, a helplessness I couldn’t shake off with my usual devil-may-care attitude. Despite my earlier preparations, I had not prepared for this.

I was not prepared for Sungjin.

“What am I doing with you?” I mused out loud.

He laughed, eyes sparkling in the lamplights above us. “I don’t know.”

“I don’t know either,” I sighed, feeling crowded and small. “This really seems like such a waste of time now. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he said, pushing his hands inside the pockets of his jacket. “If you have time to waste, waste it on me.”

I stopped, utterly floored at Sungjin’s teasing. And given the look in his eyes and the curve of his lips, he knew exactly what he was doing.

I wanted to knock that infuriating smirk off his face.

I wanted to kiss that aggravating smirk off his face.

Something was happening. Something significant that I could not have imagined even in my wildest, fever-induced, hallucinatory dreams. I was suddenly nervous, looking at everywhere but at Sungjin himself.

Naturally, I freaked.

Again.

After a moment’s pause, in which I thankfully regained control of my mental bastions, I stormed away, fuming, flustered, and very much bothered by Park Sungjin and his words and his smirk and his eyes and just  _ everything _ about him.

I let the crowd swallow me, hoping I’d lose Sungjin in the sea of humanity. I couldn’t face him after that. Not because of his endless teasing—that much I was used to, I could handle the shamelessness, the corniness, even the snarkiness. What I couldn’t accept was what the words revealed about me.

About him.

About me and him.

Sungjin caught up with me at the end of the street, a few blocks away from my apartment. “Do you want me to leave you alone now? Will you let me walk you home?”

“I’m sorry.” I whirled around and stomped back to him. “I don’t want to waste any more of your precious time.”

“You’re not wasting my time,” he said, all seriousness. The look on his face was back, the intense concern I saw in his eyes earlier tonight at their apartment.

“But that’s what this is about, isn’t it? You admit it.”

“Admit what?”

“That the real reason you’re here with me now is because you want to see me fall flat on my face and make a fool out of myself. You think it’s silly that I’m doing this. You just said so. It’s a waste of time. I’m wasting my time.”

“That’s really not what I said.” Sungjin closed the distance between us, stepping right up to me. “You’re not a waste of my time.”

I started back down the street with one destination in mind. I needed another drink. Some banana milk to wash all this madness off my system. Maybe some grape juice, too. Or maybe a blueberry greek yogurt popsicle will help numb my brain after being supersaturated by Park Sungjin.

“Is it really so bad to want to go out tonight? Is it really so bad to want to believe that there’s someone out there for me? That I don’t have to spend all this time alone? Do you think I look at how this night turned out and not think that this is the universe making fun of me for wanting to believe that some people do find love? That despite how terrible the world is, there remains a reason why people choose to stay and fight their battles?

“I know all we do is make fun of each other. That’s how we operate. I insult you, you insult me. I ignore you, you ignore me. But I just can’t do that right now. I can’t handle you making fun of me about this. It’s too important. I just can’t. I’m sorry, Sungjin. I can’t play this game with you tonight.”

Face hot and flushed, I mumbled something resembling an apology and continued down the street and straight into the convenience store. Without stopping to check if Sungjin followed me, I bought a pint of vanilla ice cream, a bag of marshmallows, and a lemon chiffon roll. Even though I knew that all these sweets were nothing more than a temporary remedy to my emotional distress, I couldn’t stop myself from overindulging. It was like something else had taken over my brain, and I was watching myself drive the final nail down my coffin of the sad and pathetic Valentine’s cliche.

Sungjin was sitting out on the curb, and despite my better sense I sat next to him and shoved the bag of marshmallows into his chest. It seems I couldn’t get anything right at all this night. Not even properly walking out on someone.

Though to be completely honest, I didn’t want to walk out on him.

With how mean I was to him, I’m pretty sure I didn’t deserve him chasing after me and waiting out for me.

Yet there we were.

“You’re not a waste of my time,” he said. The words carried an intriguing sincerity and a surprising earnestness.

I didn’t know what to say.  _ If _ I should say something or if I should keep my mouth shut. But my sense of self-preservation couldn’t adequately compensate for my lethal curiosity so I asked, “Why did you really come out here with me?”

I regretted the question as soon as I asked it. Once again I felt vulnerable and exposed, like I pried open my ribs and handed him a gun pointed straight at my heart telling him to shoot me. I waited, impatient, while he contemplated. But the truth is, I wasn’t ready to hear what Sungjin thought of me. It mattered too much. And that was a bad, bad thing. It left me subject to whatever he had to say about me. His words would hit me like a bullet, and even if I wouldn’t bleed, it would crush me. Good or bad, his words would haunt me. But what he said wasn’t good or bad. It was just… Sungjin.

“Because I wanted to.”

“Why?” Uncharted territory lay ahead of me. “You hate me.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“Well, you clearly don’t like me.” I popped off the lid on my ice cream. Or at least I tried to, but it was frozen tight. “I mean, you know what I mean.”

Sungjin reached for the pint in my hands and easily pulled off the lid for me. He gave it back, settling my ice cream gently between my waiting palms. “I really don’t hate you. Or dislike you.” 

“You’ve been weird to me since the day we met!”

“How am I weird to you?” He tore open the bag of marshmallows and held it open for me. “I’ve been nothing but good to you. You’re the one who who keeps acting like you don’t want to be around me.”

“That’s because you keep cleaning up after me!” I grab a handful of marshmallows. “Ever since the day we met, all you’ve ever done was pick up after me.”

Because the universe has a cruel sense of humor, I dropped three marshmallows just as I said that. Sungjin was trying very hard not to laugh as he picked up after me. “The day we met… that was the day Jae moved in with me. It was raining hard out and you were soaked and making puddles all over the apartment.”

“Yes, and you were cleaning up after me the entire time.” I also had to borrow one of his towels because Jae couldn’t remember which box he put all his towels. And clothes. Sungjin chased me around the apartment with a mop and rag.

“You were making a mess.”

“You implied I gave the impression that  _ I _ ’m a mess.”

He laughed. “You are a hot mess.”

I should have slapped him for that comment. Punched him. Kicked him. Dumped the vanilla ice cream over his perfectly shaped head. Smashed the lemon cake roll on his god-level nose. But I didn’t. I sat there and waited for my ice cream to soften up before digging in.

“You were also really determined to not like me,” he continued, pinning me with an accusatory glare.

The conversation was surprising and revealing and frustrating.  “I was. But to be fair, it was only because you were acting like you didn’t want to be my friend either. You didn’t even smile at me the when I introduced myself. And then you were so formal. And then you were just…  _ you _ .”

“That’s because I  _ didn’t _ want to be your friend.” All previous smirks and smiles were gone.

I had nothing left to lose so I leaned in, invading his personal space one more time, just to look into his eyes as I asked my question. “You didn’t?”

“No,” he said, holding my gaze and not letting go. “I wanted to date you.”

Time slowed and I forgot to breathe. This was it. This was the make or break moment that would forever define what came next. But the words grated at me. Want _ ed _ . What was that supposed to mean? 

My curiosity got the better of me, as it often does. “Is that… strictly in the past tense?”

“No.”

I gazed up at the sky and then back down at Sungjin. “At the staircase earlier tonight… Did… did you want to kiss me?”

I expected him to hesitate. To deny it. To say something funny and then be annoyed I even asked. But it was too much to ask for the night to go as I expected.

“I did.”

“Oh,” I breathed. “Why didn’t you?”

“It wasn’t the right time,” he muttered softly. “And it’s not really about me, I guess. Not the kiss at least. The whole week watching you put in all that effort for someone who wasn’t me made me so angry at you. But I was really angry at myself because I didn’t ask you out first. Because I was afraid you’d say no. Because if you said no, then it would only get even weirder between us. I was afraid you’d start avoiding me, that you’d avoid coming to the apartment completely, and I’d never see you on my couch ever again. I was afraid you’d reject me. I was more afraid you’d take it as a joke. That, like right now, you’d think I was doing it because I felt sorry for you. I could never feel sorry for you. Also I knew if I kissed you by surprise, you’d kick my nuts and I didn’t want to risk it.”

I tried not to smile, but I failed phenomenally. “I would. Not that I didn’t want you to. Or that I’ve been avoiding you because I don’t like you when the truth is I’ve been avoiding you because whenever I see you I just… I kind of…”

Sungjin smiled a slow, seductive smile. “Kind of what?”

“You know…”

“Do I?”

“Don’t be annoying.”

He chuckled low under his breath before tilting his head to lean down and kiss me. It was a slow, lingering, dreamy kiss that stretched on and on and on.

It was just dazzlingly perfect.

So there you have it. The night the universe decided to throw all my plans straight to the proverbial dump and flip my life over. I admit, the following morning, I had woken up in a panic wondering if I had dreamt the entire thing, but the grumpy bear sleeping next to me—fully clothed and in hibernation mode, just by the way—proved otherwise. It wasn’t until a few weeks later that the  _ you know _ happened but that’s a whole other conversation that we can get to at some other time. The point is, the night might have been a fluke, but the feelings were real.  _ Are _ real. It hasn’t been easy, Sungjin is still chasing me around with a mop from time to time, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Except maybe for Jae who now mourns being demoted to only being my second most favorite person in the whole wide universe.

But, eh, he’ll live.

 


End file.
